“Gutmann generated a lot of heat last December with the publication of a paper that called Windows Vista’s Content Protection scheme ‘the longest suicide note in history’. He updated it in April, mostly to call his critics names, and he updated it yet again yesterday with a top-of-the-page slam at my ZDNet colleague George Ou, who took exception with some of Gutmann’s claims yesterday. Gutmann has a flair for melodramatic language and headline-grabbing phrases, but his theoretical arguments against Vista’s video subsystem fall apart quickly when they make contact with the real world.”
I must admit, Guttermann comes off the better of the two in this argument.
>> I must admit, Guttermann comes off the better of the two in this argument. <<
[[ “This is not commercial HD content being blocked, this is the users’ own content,” Gutmann said. “The more premium content you have, the more output is disabled.”
I had to read that passage several times to make sure I understood what I was reading, because it directly contradicts my experience with Windows Vista and high-definition content. In fact, it does not appear to be supported by any real-world experience.]]
pg–az sez “I need read no further”. Remembering this can’t-play-your-OWN-content as a damning accusation that actually worried me, that it is simply false, that Gutmann dared say such a thing before even testing it, well so much for Gutmann. The only thing which might save his reputation is that it seems HE might have qualified his own remarks as theoretical, and claim that it was being quoted out of context and he never meant himself to be taken all that seriously.
“Guttermann comes off the better of the two in this argument.”
Probably because Gutmann is a respected professional with a good trackrecord and history of knowing what he is talking about while Bott, uh, writes for zdnet….
This zdnet-“…but I can see”-thing is no real argument.
Some guy shoots his mouth off, gets more coverage than he should, turns out he’s talking rot to a greater or lesser degree. Best bit:
‘In the update to your original paper, you compare Microsoft employees to Nazi war criminals (“we were only following ordersâ€), with a specific link to the Wikipedia article on the Nuremberg defense, and to a criminal defendant with “six previous violent crime convictions on his record.‒
Wow. Is there a Godwin’s law prize?
Pardon – he never compared them to Nazi’s – the Nurenburg defence is a term used in a number of cases beyond that event which has used the term without needing to make direct Nazi references.
The whole basis people use the Nurenburg defence is because it is a crock of bull to say, “we were only following orders” as anyone who knows about the defence force, if you are ordered to comitt an illegal act you can refer it up the chain of command and you have no legal requirements to carry it out.
Same goes for Microsoft and their defence claiming it was the ‘big bad media companies’.
Same goes for Microsoft and their defence claiming it was the ‘big bad media companies’.
Of course MS could have ignored all that stuff, but what would happen then? Users would bitch and moan that they can’t play their HD/BD stuff on their computer.
As Apple will demonstrate in the next few years these formats won’t mean a thing – they’ll die off. The simple fact is, end users want their movies and they want them now from the comfort of their own home. They want to sit there with a set top box, surf to ‘iTunes’ download their movies and watch it on their television, without needing to leave the house.
Microsoft knows this too; the reality is, the days of needing ‘media’ will eventually die out as things can be transported over the internet from the source to the destination. There are already DVD deliveries to the door, the next move is to simply have DVD deliveries by the internet as internet connections get to a point that you can download high definition movies over the internet without needing to wait ours – being able to stream and save to a hard disk at the same time.
Regarding the risk of piracy, what it says to me that if companies are spending $500million or so on a very average movie and expect to get $1billion back – the issue lies with the company who think that spending $500million on one movie is reasonable.
Edited 2007-08-17 16:21
I’m not so sure about Apple, and here’s an article explaining why better than I can:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/aacs-tentacles.ars
It’s about Gutmann too, but it’s mainly about AACS and it argues that neither Apple nor Microsoft will be compelled to resist the media companies. As long as consumers will want to play Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, they have to give them that, and this ability and AACS come as a package. AACS imposes draconic terms of control over the hardware at OS level. If Apple wants OS X to play hi-def content they will have to implement DRM as AACS dictates.
yeah, because the media companies are doing us such a huge favor letting us buy our dvd collection over again as blue ray/hddvd. If MS (and others who implement DRM) refused to do so, are you really suggesting the media companies would just stop selling us there product?
DRM where there is choice in the market (e.g. MP3 players or hardware DVD players) is forced on us because no single device manufacturer has the leverage to push back against the content providers. Even apple with a huge % of the digital audio market has only had limited success in influencing content producers away from DRM.
In a field like desktop OS where there is a monopoly, the use of DRM is forced on us as much by the monopoly OS provider as a means to lock out competitors as it is a requirement of the content providers. If a company with the size and clout of MS pushed back against the content providers that would change the game. They don’t because it is not in their best interests.
“””
The whole basis people use the Nurenburg defence is because it is a crock of bull to say, “we were only following orders” as anyone who knows about the defence force, if you are ordered to comitt an illegal act you can refer it up the chain of command and you have no legal requirements to carry it out.
“””
That seems logical, doesn’t it? The really scary thing is that that is not the way people act, as Stanley Milgram demonstrated with his chilling experiments in the 60’s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Real people fear authority. And they do what they are told.
Edited 2007-08-17 14:37
That shows a situation where there are no references points nor have the individuals had prior training know the defence force protocols; there is a whole protocol/system setup that is actually there to address those issues.
Those organisations which do have robust systems in place also tend not to have the same level of corruption. As shown in Enron, the problem wasn’t that those who wanted to tell were scared to, but the fact that there wasn’t the infrastructure setup so that they could report it knowing that they would be protected.
Like I said, within the defence force there is a whole legal framework setup for such a situation – what you’ve pointed out only shows what happens when there isn’t that legal framework in place.
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“””
Pardon? The experimental subjects had no need for a legal framework. They were not in the military. And the experiment was not even job related. They agreed to participate in a study. That’s all. They could have gotten up and walked out and forfeited nothing but, possibly, their payment for participation.
All that was required to get 65% of them to electrocute another human being with a 450V potential was a white lab coat, an authoritative sounding voice, and a few dollars promised payment.
You are really reaching to argue that some sort of legal framework would have changed anything. What might the legal procedure have granted them? The right to get up and walk out? They had that anyway.
Edited 2007-08-17 16:27
Actually, if you look at the experiement it shows that if you depersonalise things you can get humans to do almost anything. The fact that the person receiving the shock isn’t even in the room allows the individual to be divorced from their actions.
Microsoft could have said no to the ‘secure path’ but they chose not to. They chose not to because they think that it’ll be the future. The reality is, they’re making the same mistake they did 15 years ago – underestimating the roll of the internet in the future. They made the mistake once and now they’re making it again assuming that media will still be around in the future as internet speeds increase.
“””
“””
Absolutely. Glad you agree. Depersonalize, throw in some authority, and offer a little monetary reward… it doesn’t have to be much.
I hope you are right about the internet remaining free and Microsoft misjudging.
I find myself wondering if MS and the media might not end up effectively owning the Internet at some point.
The problem is that with media you can control it alot more, you can stop people copying, stop people from ripping – its format that isn’t flexible. On the other hand, if these companies were to move onto the internet, it would open a big question relating to how they protect their content; DRM and various technologies so far have been a failure.
With that comes the question whether these companies can actually creat a business where people will actually be compelled to purchase because they want to purchase it rather than it being a matter of the media companies lock all alternative avenues thus forcing people in one direction.
What these companies have on their side for now, however, is the fact that technology in most parts of the world are still terrible – I mean, I’m here in New Zealand, get any kiwi to talk about the state of broadband – I can assure you, you’ll need a place to sit down and rest, because it’ll be a long rant.
Edited 2007-08-17 16:48
> electrocute another human being with a 450V potential
That’s like electrocution with a banana: it’s not the banana that kills people, it’s the current running through the banana that can kill people.
Somewhere the dust of Van der Graaf is sighing.
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Somewhere the dust of Van der Graaf is sighing.
“””
You are focusing on the wrong thing. This was a psychological experiment, not a basic physics experiment.
And I’m not at all sure where you are going with the banana.
But, it takes both current and a potential. Here, the notable thing from a psychological standpoint, is the voltage.
You just don’t generate the same level of horror by saying “electrocute another human being with a 6 milliamp current”, or “electrocute another human being with 2 watts of power”. So quoting the measured current flow, or the power, would have been less appropriate for both the experimental setup and for my post.
Here is a rule of thumb reference on the physics:
http://osha.gov/SLTC/etools/construction/electrical_incidents/elecc…
“The whole basis people use the Nurenburg defence is because it is a crock of bull to say, “we were only following orders” as anyone who knows about the defence force, if you are ordered to comitt an illegal act you can refer it up the chain of command and you have no legal requirements to carry it out.
Same goes for Microsoft and their defence claiming it was the ‘big bad media companies’.”
You don’t think that comparing the act of implementing Hollywood’s DRM to that of committing genocide is a bit over the top?
Anyway, just imagine what would have happened had Microsoft refused to implement Hollywood’s DRM:
If Microsoft didn’t implement the DRM required for DRM’ed HD-DVDs and BR discs, then Hollywood wouldn’t allow Vista to play such discs. And Hollywood would *love* to have any excuse to deny PCs the ability to play these discs since PCs are the tools of piracy (and 99.999% of video disc playback time takes place not on PCs, but dedicated players (which implement the same DRM, BTW), so Hollywood wouldn’t miss the PC revenue at all).
Then, OSX Leopard is released with the required DRM so it can play Hollywood’s hi-def discs, and next thing you know, Jobs releases an “I’m a PC; I’m a Mac” ad with the Mac mocking the PC for its inability to play Hollywood’s discs.
Microsoft did not implement DRM to please Hollywood, it implemented it to allow its own users to legally play Hollywood’s hi-def discs. In other words, they did it to make their own product more appealing to the masses.
(The geeks that would rather that Vista not be able to play these discs due to lack of DRM support won’t be buying such discs anyway (well, not for computer playback; they’ll hypocritically buy them for dedicated players and not say a word regarding the dedicated player’s very same DRM that degrades the signal if DRM’ed disc with the ITC bit enabled is played on a non-HDCP monitor). These geeks aren’t Vista customers anyway; they are Linux users that will feel virtuous over the fact that their OS of choice can’t legally play Hollywood’s discs; a bit like monks feeling virtuous for abstaning from fullfilling desires of the flesh.)
Edited 2007-08-17 17:37
If Microsoft didn’t implement the DRM required for DRM’ed HD-DVDs and BR discs, then Hollywood wouldn’t allow Vista to play such discs.
I don’t agree. There is software for XP that legally plays HD-DVD and Blu-ray. If Microsoft had said “adding all this DRM crap to Vista is just too hard”, I suspect the studios would have backpedaled and relaxed their requirements. DRM standards such as AACS are a continual process of negotiation, and MS simply did not negotiate very hard.
Ahh assumptions. Gotta love ’em.
If you have something specific to add to the discussion, let’s see it.
“I don’t agree. There is software for XP that legally plays HD-DVD and Blu-ray. If Microsoft had said “adding all this DRM crap to Vista is just too hard”, I suspect the studios would have backpedaled and relaxed their requirements.”
This is fundamentally incorrect and is a great example of why people without internals knowledge shouldn’t comment on things they don’t know anything about (and that includes Gutmann who is demonstrably clueless when it comes to Windows internals). Content using HDCP requires a source to output encryption system that enforces the DRM and attempts to prevent bus-snooping, in-process stream redirection, etc..
Because of the above, the OCP PVP framework already existed for XP (SP2) in a more primitive form (COPP), though Vista’s implementation is more comprehensive in that it provides support for more complicated scenarios, such as cable card, DTCP (and OCP is an umbrella for a number of other DRM technologies, besides PVP, that existed in some form in earlier versions of Windows). In terms of the Video Path DRM, the primary difference between OCP’s PVP and COPP is the technical implementation specifics in the driver model and the range of supported device scenarios.
Regardless, for HDCP and DTCP, if the player software doesn’t use COPP or OCP PVP, you aren’t getting any output for that particular stream. While the implementation details differ, COPP and OCP PVP are functionally the same thing. In both cases, unprotected content can output alongside protected content and there are NO disabling features with regards to unprotected hi-def content and the ENTIRE system is opt-in. All of Gutmann’s comments are simply rubbish from a technical standpoint and exist purely to promote himself and his ideologically driven viewpoint.
Gutmann may be, in the eyes of some, a respected Academic and Ed Bott may just be some light-weight tech journalist for ZDNet, but Bott is right and Gutmann is PROVABLY wrong and has yet to provide even ONE iota of verifiable evidence that his assertions are correct.
OK, so XP has OCP PVP, which is enough to legally play HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Why did MS add even more DRM features to Vista? To “provide support for more complicated scenarios” that virtually nobody cares about? I still think that MS could have skipped the Vista DRM improvements and users would be no worse off.
“OK, so XP has OCP PVP, which is enough to legally play HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Why did MS add even more DRM features to Vista? To “provide support for more complicated scenarios” that virtually nobody cares about? I still think that MS could have skipped the Vista DRM improvements and users would be no worse off.”
I provided an example of said scenario; cablecard. If you don’t like this DRM nonsense, blame the content companies and write your government representative. All Microsoft is doing is ensuring they can deliver the content in scenarios that customers DO care about (all in one, cable card equipped Media Center PC’s, for example).
The alternative to Microsoft implementing these frameworks is 3rd party solutions that lead to incidents like the Sony rootkit fiasco, but on a much grander scale. Imagine incompatible solutions implemented as multiple competing frameworks (built upon hacked drivers and other nonsense living in kernel mode) all built by 3rd parties made up of companies like Macromedia, along with video and display hardware manufactures. That was not an acceptable solution for Microsoft and it most certainly WOULD have led to the very issues Gutmann tries to claim (spuriously) that Microsoft’s solution will introduce.
In the end, this is a very simple equation; if you want to play DRM laden content, the infrastructure must be there to support it. Does that suck? Yes, it really does. But that doesn’t change the technical reality that Microsoft is merely implementing (in a well documented fashion – see MSDN library and DDK documentation) the infrastructure to support DRM. If your content isn’t DRM encumbered, then that infrastructure never even comes into the picture. So in the inverse, if you don’t want to experience Vista’s DRM infrastructure, then don’t buy DRM encumbered content. It really is THAT SIMPLE.
This probably the most level-headed comment I’ve seen on this entire article.
I would also like to point out, however, that Microsoft has enough money, power, and influence to campaign against DRM. Hell, if they wanted to, they could buy out most of the entire movie industry.
I do believe Microsoft was cornered into implementing the DRM they did in Vista. But if Apple, Linux, or anybody implemented it, I’d complain. Vocally at that. It’s not necessarily a matter of virtuosity, but a matter of wanting full control of content that I buy. It’s purely selfish reasons, really. Regardless of any amount of DRM, stuff’s gonna get pirated. In the end, the legitimate consumer is the one that pays out of their pockets for the faulty DRM systems.
I understand that Microsoft was pretty much coerced into implementing DRM, but they implemented it without fighting back. And no other single player in the DRM ‘war’ has more resources and influence than Microsoft. If Microsoft was interested in the interests of the consumer, I think they would fight DRM at the same rate they implement it. I believe this about every company that the movie and music industries bully around. However, I give Microsoft less slack for their actions, but only because they have more resources to defend themselves and their customers without resorting to corporate suicide, for a lack of a better term.
Of course, they’re a company whose sole purpose is to make money and yadda yadda yadda. They could care less about their consumers as long as they get the most possible profit. Understandable, I suppose. Two wrongs don’t make a right, sure, but if Microsoft’s only going to look out for itself, I can just as validly only look after my own self and interests by campaigning against them for not using their vast resources to fight for what’s best for me (and, ultimately, them). Any other company could be in Microsoft’s position, and regardless of how benevolent they may be, if they had Microsoft’s power, they’d get the same treatment from me for their actions.
I’m not getting on a moral high horse here. I use Linux because I prefer it over Windows for reasons other than philosophical, ethical ones. Then again, I’m not a fanboy, either.
Edited 2007-08-17 19:28
Hell, if they wanted to, they could buy out most of the entire movie industry.
That is one highly misinformed statement.
Hmmm… Well, iTunes does have DRM. So you can start complaining.
On the other end – they need to make money and a vendor lock-in is not a new thing on the market.
Choices, choices…
You don’t think that comparing the act of implementing Hollywood’s DRM to that of committing genocide is a bit over the top?
You are the one who made the genocide comparison. Are you arguing with yourself? In the future I hope you can come up with some decent astroturf.
Funny how Vista/Microsoft proponents are ready to “bust” any FUD being generated about their OS of choice, especially when Microsoft and their cheerleaders seem all too happy to spread all kinds of FUD about Linux and other alternative OS’s (yes, I speaking to you Mr. Ballmer…)
Even though I’ve successfully “banned” Microsoft from my household network (and managed to get my comany running on nearly 100% FOSS), I will no longer willfully participate in badmouthing Microsoft and their products without having any hard evidence. I would love nothing more than to see Linux win a little more mindshare but if it’s not done in an honest and honorable manner then that makes us FOSS fanboys no better than the crap of which we’re accusing Microsoft denizens.
The FUD really needs to stop – from both directions.
I will no longer willfully participate in badmouthing Microsoft and their products without having any hard evidence.
but “fortunately” every install of any MS product is hard evidence, so thats not really something we are in short supply of
Every install of an MS product is case study of your system alone. I’ve lost count of the number of times the anti-MS campaigners have confused their own bad experiences as proof that MS is shit when in reality it may just be that their unlucky, have unusual set ups or even have 3rd party software / drivers screwing the MS software up.
The word ‘proof’ often gets misused in cases like these.
Yes… the billion installs that got infected with blaster, sassar, and the like, were simply unlucky
not to mention what happens should one try to install a standard xp without NAT.
come to think of it, the numerious ways to crash IE are also simply cause of my unlucky or unusual setup.
or xp’s complete refusal to work on my relatively standard amd64 system.
or its slow but steady build up of ram hogging.
i suppose its because of my unusual setup that winblows wants to install drivers for the usb device for every port i plug it in?
well.. enough said, by any standard everywhere else but software, all MS products would have been utterly cancelled before it even hit the market, and internal quality control would label it abysmal failure of extreme proportions..
Edited 2007-08-17 14:30
Equally billions of installs are not infected with blaster (et al), Opera / firefox can be crashed on Linux in numerous different ways and a lot of FOSS refuses to work on far more chip sets than Windows.
I’m by no means a MS fanboy (in fact I hate XP), however I’ve never had malway on XP / 2000, Win200 Pro has crashed about a dozen times in 7 years (and the OS is still going strong now despite being used regularly on a celleron 500MHz) etc. I could turn around and say that my install is /proof/ that Windows is a stable reliable system, but it’s not. it’s just my experience on my set up. nothing more nothing less.
you mean you never had any malware that you KNOW about..
besides, some would argue that just by having winblows you have malware…
more importantly, you can ofcourse easily keep winblows free of virusses by shielding it externally with NAT, virus scanners, lots of firewalls, and crappy shit, but do you dare connect your box directly to your net and just sleep happily?
“Every install of an MS product is case study of your system alone. I’ve lost count of the number of times the anti-MS campaigners have confused their own bad experiences as proof that MS is shit when in reality it may just be that their unlucky, have unusual set ups or even have 3rd party software / drivers screwing the MS software up.”
Good point. But that statement can be easily turned around:
Every install of a Linux product is case study of your system alone. I’ve lost count of the number of times the anti-Linux campaigners have confused their own bad experiences as proof that Linux is shit when in reality it may just be that their unlucky, have unusual set ups or even have 3rd party software / drivers screwing the Linux software up.
Really, the anti-Linux FUD is often overwhelming. The simple fact is, Linux works great for most people, from total computer noobs (grandma, joe-sixpack, etc), to total geeks (programmers, sys-admins, OSNews zealots, etc), and it’s totally easy. But that does not stop all the anti-Linux zealots from trashing it, falsely claiming that X or Y does not work (when it usually does 99.99999% of the time), or that Linux is for commies, or whatever.
But point well taken that a lot of the anti-Windows stuff is either false or heavily exaggerated. Geeks who post on OSNews or Slashdot or ZDNet have a true penchant for hyperbole.
But what’s really bad are the corporate goons who spread the FUD (Ballmer).
I’d say 99.99999% was a touch of an exaggeration but I certainly have few problems with Linux (and when I do it’s almost always down to something I’ve not set up right)
I don’t see why you got so defensive about Linux though as my point never referenced it at all.
It clearly isn’t going to stop coming from the Microsoft cheersquad.
Given that, I’m slightly inclined myself towards a view that if it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander.
If the Microsoft cheersquad want to stop FUD directed back at Microsoft, then Microsoft should stop generating it in the first place.
I modded you up because we’re in dire need of sensible words, but let’s keep in mind a little difference between the FLOSS and the Microsoft “camps”: yes, you have Linux zealots spouting nonsense sometimes, but the companies working with and for FLOSS are usually very restrained and correct in their PR with the world. With Microsoft, you can forget that, FUD comes straight from the horse’s mouth together with flying chairs. Until there’s a full acceptance of the fact that proprietary sw and free sw can and must cohexist peacefully, there will be no stop to the quantity of FUD coming out from that Redmond place.
Rehdon
I wonder when Apple will include native HDCP in their OS to play BlueRay movies.
Yeah, that’s a very good point. I was wondering about that too.
I wonder when Apple will include native HDCP in their OS to play BlueRay movies.
Meh, it doesn’t matter. When it happens, people will find a way to excuse it because, since it’s Apple doing it and not MS, then it must be ok.
Same when HDCP support comes to Linux (if it isn’t there already). With Linux becoming more commercialized every day, it’s not a question of if all this DRM will be ‘officially’ supported, but only a question of when. Then all the people who flocked to Linux to escape DRM hell are not going to be looking very smart.
“Then all the people who flocked to Linux to escape DRM hell are not going to be looking very smart.”
The flaw in your logic is that you can simply take the crippling garbage out of an OS that is Open source. Its not like Apple or Microsoft’s offerings GNU has a free market.
More obviously Linux is funded currently by companies focused on the *Server* they do not want DRM implemented *this* way, where stability and performance matter more than content provision.
Now if you were arguing that to play what Microsoft call “premium content”(sic) GNU has to have an implementation much like Vista’s, you may have had a point.
AFAIK, Vista has code which actively degrades video performance in the event that protected content is played over an unprotected channel.
Open source code which did an equivalent function is liable to be cut out by the end users, with a view to playing protected content over whatever channel the end user wants to.
The media corporations know all this, and hence they are very very unlikely to award a legitimate key to any open source player.
All of this does not preclude a closed source player for Linux, but one wonders really if such a thing would be at all popular.
“AFAIK, Vista has code which actively degrades video performance in the event that protected content is played over an unprotected channel.”
That’s not a vista thing. That’s the DRM on the discs. Same thing happens if you play it on a set top box and the TV doesn’t have HDCP or if you use component cables.
The support for the DRM placed on discs by the MPAA in Vista is no different than the DRM support in a set top box that plays HD-DVD or blue ray.
Yes the same thing happens, but it is because the software in Vista and the software in the players both do a similar thing and degrade the video.
You can’t have a “degrade” function “on the discs” … the discs after all just have data on them. All active “functions” reside in the players.
It is possible that the “degrade” function is not in Vista but it is in the optical drives. The one and only place it cannot be is “on the discs”.
The “support for the DRM placed on discs by the MPAA” btw has already been cracked … twice. It is, after all, just encrypted data.
The silly thing is, by the very nature of an optical disc, in order for DRM to work you have to place both the encrypted data and the keys on the disc.
That is a fundamentally flawed scheme … it relies purely on “security through obscurity” which is well known not to work. DRM on optical media essentially does not work where a computer is involved. Given a little time, it will doubtless be hacked.
Edited 2007-08-18 09:18
It’s not like you can play that same content on Linux without the DRM. Likewise, you can choose to avoid DRM content on Windows and not have to deal with the DRM at all.
The situation is similar to the one with CSS. People will always crack these DRM techniques and create players that works on Linux, without degrading quality or require HDCP hardware. It wont be leagal in parts of the world, like in the US, but still.
Yes, illegally, exactly. In this case though, it’s a lot easier to straight up avoid the DRM content.
The situation is similar to the one with CSS. People will always crack these DRM techniques and create players that works on Linux, without degrading quality or require HDCP hardware. It wont be leagal in parts of the world, like in the US, but still.
And once it’s cracked, it’ll play just as well on Windows or OSX as it does on Linux. The only difference is that on Linux, you’ll actually have to wait longer to be able to play the content, until it is either cracked or the DRM is implemented on Linux.
Anyway, I’m not a huge fan of DRM cracking; I’m more a proponent of boycotting. Every time you crack a DRM scheme, it comes back nastier than ever – eg: CSS to ACSS.
well running Vista64 on a 2.8 GHz Intel EMT64 P4HT running DRM videos does indeed pump the CPU to 100% load but it’s not like that actually keeps the computer from doing anything else. I think my little gauge that measures that is a bit misleading or rather an estimate at any given moment. It does stutter for a brief instant though. Amazingly though here’s two odd things Vista “fixed” over XPMCE2005
1) Sound driver works and never crashes unlike in XPMCE2005, what’s really weird about this is it’s the same driver! Yup folks Dell ain’t updated it, it’s the same exact driver for both XPMCE2005 and for Vista64. Despite this in XPMCE2005 it would periodically just quit working and not work until a reboot. But in Vista it works flawlessly.
2) Quicktime protected movies aka itunes videos work with zero stutter. Under XPMCE2005 playing iTunes videos in iTunes was an exercise in madness as it slideshowed. Playing them in Quicktime (bypassing iTunes) was the only way to play them. Under Vista64 they run smooth as butter and I can mutli-task without causing a stutter.
Now regarding Blu-Ray and disabling peoples p-Dif type of components I dunno, I don’t mess with non-computer designed components on my computer so I don’t know what to believe.
However I would like to point out that Ed Bot’s article is a little misleading too in his defense of Vista he says: ““users are seeing status codes that say ‘graphics OPM resolution too high’” and quotes you as calling this “probably the most bizarre status code ever.” Well, I hang out regularly in a couple of forums with other digital media fanatics (The Green Button, AVS Forum, and microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter, to name just three) and I can’t find a single report of this error or anything remotely like it. In fact, most of the problems people are reporting have to do with connecting consumer electronics gear, which has nothing to do with Windows, Microsoft, or DRM.”
I hang out at The Green Button frequently as well and most of their information and posts is still about MCE2005 NOT Vista. Second, these “consumer electronics gear” problems he claims has nothing to do with MSFT I disagree with because it would seem the complaints people make would be that they worked flawlessly under XP but not under Vista. – If I’m wrong here point it out but point it out to Ed too because his argument strikes me as a fallacy.
Regarding Linux, I love it and would rather run it on everything but the fact remains that using it for multimedia is still a pain in the ass and getting MythTV for a media center set up is madness. I frankly don’t even care if it records TV, I can record with my vista machine but let me playback on the Linux one but I’m tired of wasting my time setting software up that is a couple minor clicks and done in Windows.
Well it goes to 100% CPU usuage because HD video, protected or not, heavily taxes your CPU. I have a Vista Media Center but I got a Video card that off loads the HD from the CPU so it’s not an issue.
It’s 2007, and with decent hardware, and the most advanced OS the biggest company in the software world can produce, you watch video “smooth as butter”, and you can even multi task without a problem. Well. Congrats. The funny part is paid for this. Linux is free as in beer and freedom and races far ahead of Vista in capabilities. The really funny part, you are OK with that.
hi Budword. I don’t unerstand your point, perhaps you could restate your post with less passion and more sense?
I run Linux on my server and do some work on a Linux partition (Ubuntu Feisty 64 bit to be exact) but I do not like how difficult multimedia programs such as Media Center ones still are to setup and use. So while there are some Linux apps I prefer (astronomy ones mostly), it fails to be a satisfactory tool at most multimedia tasks for me. Some of these problems I have no doubt are actually the result of vendors refusing to make drivers that can be recognized easily for programs like they are in Windows (tv cards for example).
This is OSnews.com, buddy.
This comment section is reserved for Microsoft hatred only. Rational thinking is not welcome.
oh so of course people that hate Microsoft are not thinking Rationally?? and do you also claim the opposite is inherently true as well?
So why does everyone say that Linux requires that people be intermediate to expert in using computers and that windows is best for the newbies?? (This isn’t my view) How does that sit with the “Microsoft haters are not rational thinkers” comment?
btw although this was obviously intended as light humour, you should realise that a lot of linux users dont hate microsoft, and also that most people that DO hate microsoft have good reason for it. I do wish the same could be said for Linux.
“btw although this was obviously intended as light humour, you should realise that a lot of linux users dont hate microsoft, and also that most people that DO hate microsoft have good reason for it. I do wish the same could be said for Linux.”
I personally don’t “hate” Microsoft. They’ve done some good things (very few, really, after looking at and thinking about their entire history…). I just hate their business practices and monopoly position. I’m getting sick of how obtrusive they’re making their operating systems, how ridiculously many annoyances they’re building into them these days, the insane number of pointless, RAM-wasting, hard drive-grinding services enabled by default. Oh, and the poorly-made software installers. Registry startup items? Check. “Startup” folder startup items? Check. Bundled spyware, desktop icons, QuickLaunch Icons, cluttered Start menu? Check, check, check, and check.
On the other hand, I do like Windows’ user interface and its general snappiness, but I can live without it. I would love to see ReactOS pick up to be a true Windows replacement, because I’ve grown truly fond some Windows applications. Sure, I have a Windows XP Pro (upgrade) license, but honestly, I’m getting sick of its performance on my 256-meg RD-RAM system, and all the modifications after install (including disabling services, removing programs that want control of my system from the startup sequence which I didn’t even want there in the first place, etc.).
Linux is great, and for most things it’s my preferred OS these days, but there are still various things–such as certain Windows-only programs and ease of installing new programs not in the repository–that would be really nice. Proprietary software, like the Opera browser and nVidia drivers, included.
Edited 2007-08-17 04:09
Why on earth would you install Windows XP on a system with such a tiny amount of RAM? The sweet spot for XP is 1GB to 3GB of RAM, and even 512MB is limiting.
If you can find a way to get your windows only software working on Linux, you would be better off with a lightweight DE like XFCE. But seriously, 256MB? RAM is so cheap these days (OK, RDRAM is a bit exotic and you might have trouble finding any, but still, I’m sure you could pick up a gig or so second hand for peanuts).
I too have a number of Windows apps that just don’t work on Linux, even in a VM, so migrating to Linux or some other OS is not an option for me at the moment.
But I have no loyalty or love for any particular OS, I use what works best with the applications I run and annoys me the least (which happens to be Windows at the moment, because it is the only OS that plays nice with my apps).
I don’t hate MS or Windows (I don’t like them either), and DRM is a non-issue for me since I don’t play DRM protected media on my PC anyway, and as long as it doesn’t get in my way, I don’t care. I think some people are getting a tad paranoid about DRM.
“Why on earth would you install Windows XP on a system with such a tiny amount of RAM? The sweet spot for XP is 1GB to 3GB of RAM, and even 512MB is limiting”
I’d hardly call a spread of 2GB of ram a sweet spot, and for most users, 512 is just fine. Exaggeration doesn’t help anybody
Well, yes you are right, that is a spread – the exact sweet spot will be determined by the software you are running. If you are a gamer playing any recent game, you should look at installing 3GB (no more – 32 bit Windows cant use any more than 3GB). If you frequently edit images or video, again, the more RAM the better. If you do routine office stuff, 1GB should be a comfortable ride. If you are just playing solitaire or using simple apps that don’t need much memory, and aren’t multitasking,and don’t mind lots of HDD paging, then sure 512 might do.
“no more – 32 bit Windows cant use any more than 3GB)”
That is incorrect. Windows can use 4Gbs, 2 for apps and 2 for the OS. If you boot with the PAE switch, it gives the Apps 3G and Windows 1G.
With 512M of Ram, running office 2003, surfing the web, chatting on messenger, using a webcam, all of that can be done with minimum or no swapping. I think it is ridiculous that people exaggerate the Ram usage of XP. and don’t say it’s not possible, I am doing it right now. I have Visual Studio 2003, Firefox with 5 tabs, Gaim, Thunderbird and MS Word 2003, and ram usage is high, but it is not swapping.
Client 32bit Windows versions, due to problems with 3rd party drivers and, in some cases, the device firmware of consumer grade hardware, do not support memory remapping even though PAE is enabled for NX support. 32bit client OS’s (XP SP2, Vista) no matter what memory remap options are available in hardware, will always be 4GB minus memory reservations (between 256 MB and 1.2 GB).
32bit Windows Server operating systems (all versions) support remap with PAE on hardware with remap support so all 4GB or more of physical memory, depending on SKU, will be visible. Memory remap support is a function of the computers bios in conjunction with the CPU’s PAE 36bit physically extended address space functionality, wherein the physical memory, located at regions of the physical memory map that are masked out by memory mapped io reservations, is remapped into address space above 32bit boundary.
“Client 32bit Windows versions, due to problems with 3rd party drivers and, in some cases, the device firmware of consumer grade hardware, do not support memory remapping even though PAE is enabled for NX support.”
I’m not sure what you are trying to say here, as NX and PAE are two different things altogether.
“I’m not sure what you are trying to say here, as NX and PAE are two different things altogether.”
Incorrect. Rather the write this up myself, I will just lift if from the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension :
“In traditional 32-bit protected mode, x86 processors use a two-level page translation scheme, where the register CR3 points to a single 4K-long page directory, which is divided into 1024 4-byte entries that point to 4 KiB long page tables, similarly consisting of 1024 4-byte entries pointing to 4 KiB long pages.
Enabling PAE (by setting bit 5, PAE, of the system control register CR4) causes major changes to this scheme. By default, the size of each page remains as 4 KiB. Each entry in the page table and page directory is extended to 64 bits (8 bytes) rather than 32 to allow for additional address bits; the table size does not change, however, so each table now has only 512 entries. Because this allows only a quarter as many entries as the original scheme, an extra level of hierarchy must be added, so CR3 now points to the Page Directory Pointer Table, a short table which contains pointers to 4 page directories.
Additionally, the entries in the page directory have an additional flag, named ‘PS’ (for Page Size). If this bit (bit 7) is set to 1, the page directory entry does not point to a page table, but a single large page (2 MiB in length).
The NX bit is another flag in the page directory to mark pages as “No eXecute”.“
This is why DEP (NX) enabled Windows uses the PAE enabled kernel.
“The NX bit is another flag in the page directory to mark pages as “No eXecute”.”
This is why DEP (NX) enabled Windows uses the PAE enabled kernel.”
Your reasoning is flawed. That is not why NX enabled Windows uses the PAE kernel. The No Execute bit is not related to PAE, it is a security feature designed to mark memory as not executable, thus stopping buffer overflow exploits from running. From Wikipedia:
“The NX bit, which stands for No eXecute, is a technology used in CPUs to segregate areas of memory for use by either storage of processor instructions (or code) or for storage of data, a feature normally only found in Harvard architecture processors. However, the NX bit is being increasingly used in conventional von Neumann architecture processors, for security reasons.
Any section of memory designated with the NX attribute means that it’s only to be used for storing data, so that processor instructions should not reside there, and cannot be executed if they do. The general technique, known as executable space protection, is used to prevent certain types of malicious software from taking over computers by inserting their code into another program’s data storage area and running their own code from within this section; this is known as a buffer overflow attack.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_bit
It is enabled when using the PAE kernel because it is part of the enhanced memory management subsystem, but has nothing to do with how much memory is accessible, but what can be done with that memory.
“It is enabled when using the PAE kernel because it is part of the enhanced memory management subsystem, but has nothing to do with how much memory is accessible, but what can be done with that memory.”
Again, you are wrong.
The standard address translation scheme used by the non-PAE kernel does not have enough room to accommodate any further descriptive information about PDE’s or PTE’s, because in standard x86 protected mode they are only 32bits in length. The three-level scheme that PAE implements allows the NX attribute to be used BECAUSE it also increases the LENGTH of PDE’s and PTE’s. As described previously, it is simply a bit in the Page Directory Entry or Page Table Entry, each now being 64bits in length (rather than 32), allowing for BOTH additional addressing and option bits, that define the specified pages as not allowed to be referenced by the instruction pointer.
FOR THIS REASON, AS STATED BEFORE, on 32bit systems, the PAE kernel is a REQUIREMENT for NX based hardware DEP to be enabled.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457155.aspx
And I quote:
“Beginning with Windows XP Service Pack 2, the 32-bit version of Windows utilizes the no-execute page-protection (NX) processor feature as defined by AMD or the Execute Disable bit feature as defined by Intel. In order to use these processor features, the processor must be running in Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode.”
“Beginning with Windows XP Service Pack 2, the 32-bit version of Windows utilizes the no-execute page-protection (NX) processor feature as defined by AMD or the Execute Disable bit feature as defined by Intel. In order to use these processor features, the processor must be running in Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode.”
This statement only says that it must use PAE mode, not how they are related. The fact that the functionality is implemented in the PAE kernel in no ways makes the two DIFFERENT functions related. You do not need more than 4G of Ram to use hardware DEP. You are not running in 64 bit mode when running DEP. You are just using the PAE kernel, as that is where MS implemented the functionality.
Your argument is the same as saying “a speedboat uses a propeller, and an airplane uses a propeller, therefore they both must fly”
Your argument is the same as saying “a speedboat uses a propeller, and an airplane uses a propeller, therefore they both must fly”
For the last time, IT IS THE EXTENDED PDE/PTE SIZE OF PAE MODE THAT IS THE ENABLER FOR BOTH THE EXTENDED ADDRESSING AND THE NX BIT ITSELF. THAT NX IS AN EXTENSION OF THE PAE SPEC IS DOCUMENTED FACT, NOT MY ASSERTION.
I see nothing in what you have shown me, and nothing that I could find on technet, that makes me believe otherwise. Stop yelling and either prove it with relevant links, or just give up
“I see nothing in what you have shown me, and nothing that I could find on technet, that makes me believe otherwise. Stop yelling and either prove it with relevant links, or just give up”
I have provided an accurate explanation of HOW NX works in x86 architectures. Details YOU YOURSELF can verify with windbg by viewing the PTE’s on NX protected pages. Furthermore, 1 minute spent googling NX and PAE will net you plenty of documentation that confirms my FACTUAL statements that NX is a function of the PAE spec and that a PAE enabled kernel and a PAE mode capable processor is required for NX (hardware DEP) support with all 32bit x86 Operating Systems.
I am astonished that you continue to pursue this topic when your grasp of the topic at hand so clearly indicates you are beyond your depth. Arguing that PAE and NX are separate is like arguing that the sky is green. Anyone who has spent 15 minutes reading even the most rudimentary documentation on the subject knows that the NX implementation for 32bit x86 systems is specifically and intrinsically linked to PAE. END OF STORY.
If you wish to LEARN something about PAE and NX, go back and read my posts (or ignore them) and read the linked info below. This is my last post on this subject.
Starting with an article from AMD (the company that extended the PAE spec to include NX, a solution Intel later adopted as XD):
http://developer.amd.com/articlex.jsp?id=143
“When used on a 32-bit operating system, the OS has to support Physical Address Extension mode, also known as PAE; you can’t use NX if the processor is only doing normal paging. PAE mode is supported by most modern 32-bit operating systems.”
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352
“Beginning with Windows XP SP2, the 32-bit version of Windows uses one of the following:
• The no-execute page-protection (NX) processor feature as defined by AMD.
• The Execute Disable Bit (XD) feature as defined by Intel.
To use these processor features, the processor must be running in Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode. However, Windows will automatically enable PAE mode to support DEP. Users do not have to separately enable PAE by using the /PAE boot switch.”
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457155.aspx
“Beginning with Windows XP Service Pack 2, the 32-bit version of Windows utilizes the no-execute page-protection (NX) processor feature as defined by AMD or the Execute Disable bit feature as defined by Intel. In order to use these processor features, the processor must be running in Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode.”
http://kerneltrap.org/node/3240 – Linux x86 NX support
” What does this patch do? The pagetable format of current x86 CPUs does not have an ‘execute’ bit. This means that even if an application maps a memory area without PROT_EXEC, the CPU will still allow code to be
executed in this memory. This property is often abused by exploits when they manage to inject hostile code into this memory, for example via a buffer overflow.
The NX feature changes this and adds a ‘dont execute’ bit to the PAE pagetable format. But since the flag defaults to zero (for compatibility reasons), all pages are executable by default and the kernel has to be taught to make use of this bit.”
Are you sure you’re not talking about Vista? 512mb in XP works just fine. 256mb is almost acceptable.
“Are you sure you’re not talking about Vista? 512mb in XP works just fine. 256mb is almost acceptable.”
256mb in XP is unusable. 512mb is painful. I wouldn’t run XP or Vista with less than 1gb. I prefer to run both with 2gb.
256mb in XP is unusable. 512mb is painful. I wouldn’t run XP or Vista with less than 1gb. I prefer to run both with 2gb.
Actually, no it’s not unusable. You forget 90% of the machines sold when XP came out didn’t have anywhere near 1GB. Most came with 256MB, some less than that.
I run a Dell Optiplex 933Mhz with 512MB as a DVR, and it works fine; not sluggish at all.
Just because you’re a power user that may need a lot of RAM doesn’t make the operating system “unusable” for everyone.
I… I don’t think you’ve ever used XP.
“Unusable” is a strong word. I’ve run XP on machines from 256mb when it first came out to 1.5gb now and none were “unusable”. While the machine with 1.5gb is noticably faster, the machine with 256mb still handled fine and perfectly within reason.
Of course, it you are really concerned, just use the Windows classic theme and things may speed up a bit.
I think your definitions of “fine” and “perfectly within reason” must differ from mine. On a machine with 256MB, just getting the Start Menu to refresh with a couple of applications running takes an inordinate amount of time, as the HDD frantically tries cope with the swapping between memory and the pagefile.
I suppose some people are prepared to wait a few minutes for applications to load and subject their HDD to unnecessary work; I am not.
Forget the OS, most applications these days require substantially more RAM than the stated system requirements for XP, which are just to run the OS itself, not anything you might run on it.
There is a big difference between something just functioning with 256MB of RAM, and functioning optimally, which usually entails significantly more than the minimum sys. reqs.
The original post to which I replied stated that their XP Pro machine with 256MB had performance issues, and that shutting down services was required to achieve usable functionality. My experience would certainly suggest that while XP will ‘run’ on even 128MB of RAM, it is not a pleasant experience, and there isn’t much software that will run on such an under-powered system.
Well, I guess you must be running much less demanding software than I am. Even using Office on a machine with less than gig involves far more swapping that I am prepared to put up with.
For anyone who plays games, uses multimedia creation software, 3d rendering apps, anything less than 1GB is utterly unusable on XP (and indeed, on just about any other OS – it is the applications themselves that are demanding, more so than the OS).
Of course, if all you ever do is lightweight stuff like email and light browsing, 512MB might do, but if you are trying to run XP on 256MB of RAM, I really have no sympathy for you if you have sluggish performance and constant hard drive thrashing because you don’t have enough RAM installed.
Well, I guess you must be running much less demanding software than I am. Even using Office on a machine with less than gig involves far more swapping that I am prepared to put up with.
For anyone who plays games, uses multimedia creation software, 3d rendering apps, anything less than 1GB is utterly unusable on XP (and indeed, on just about any other OS – it is the applications themselves that are demanding, more so than the OS).
Of course, if all you ever do is lightweight stuff like email and light browsing, 512MB might do, but if you are trying to run XP on 256MB of RAM, I really have no sympathy for you if you have sluggish performance and constant hard drive thrashing because you don’t have enough RAM installed.
Sounds like you’ve got some virus or spyware issues.
I’ve been running 24 bit/96Khz pro audio apps with 12 or more tracks of audio, plug-in effects, etc and also video apps (Sonic Foundry now Sony Vegas) since the 1Ghz cpu/512MB RAM days.
I love the grossly inaccurate CPU/RAM requirements people love to throw out about XP.
“Why on earth would you install Windows XP on a system with such a tiny amount of RAM? The sweet spot for XP is 1GB to 3GB of RAM, and even 512MB is limiting.”
nonsense. I’ve run XP Pro on a dual P2-250Mhz cpu machine before with two instances of FAH and acting as a server at the same time and still been able to run other programs at the same time. It wouldn’t run Quake but that wasn’t the purpose of that tool.
>They’ve done some good things
Tell me some and I tell you something about computer history.
>I personally don’t “hate” Microsoft.
Me too, it’s just bothersome. But this business you’re referring too is the one who generated the hype, the urban legend about “they have done some good thing …”.
Those who tend to say ‘Microsoft have done some good things’ are those who are currently in their teenage years – because any person around my age would remember the wonderful competition there was 20 years ago. Amiga, Amstrad, Atari, Apple – viciously at each others throats to create the better, superior and more awesome computer.
Heck, that doesn’t even go into the games console arena, Nintendo, Atari, Sega, and many others, again, at each others throats – who could creat the cheaper, better console with better gaming experience.
That is the problem with a large number of people who frequent this site; most of them live in this BS world that we should all grovel before Microsoft for something they didn’t even do! Microsoft didn’t contribute jack to the computer revolution. To some how claim that we shoud all sit around venerating Microsoft its pathetic at best.
…how Guttmann’s comments are any indication of his good track record and professionalism when he himself claims to not have used Vista at all, thereby making all his remarks as pure heresay, or bullshit if you prefer?
Technical papers perhaps? The usual method among scientists.
What Gutmann does is reads some technical paper and comes up he’s own conclusion without testing. That’s called BS in science, you have to prove everything. And here where Gutmann fails all scientific research, he never tested! Atleast Ed Bott did research on both testing himself and trying to gather test material from others. So basicly in your mind some silly preacher telling about luminiferous aether than Albert Einstein who actually tested and proved it wrong.
They also tend to do somethign called research. They don’t just go around theorizing and making shit up. Well, they do, but then they set about devising ways to test their theories and prove them right or wrong. Guttman has skipped this step and relied on rabid anti-MS asshats to protect his “research” and reputation.
Wow, what does this say about people that actually rally to the defense of Gutmann? I guess having zero credibility doesn’t bother some, that certain anti-MS zealots will rally behind anyone that attacks Microsft regardless of their background or credibility. Idiots like Gutmann do more to help Microsoft and DRM than anything. In other words it just becomes harder now for people who have a real issue with DRM to voice their complaints or concerns. Good going Gutmann…you nut.
You should really try to know what you’re talking about. Gutman has more credibility as a security professional and computer scientist than anyone at zdnet could ever dream of having. What he says has a hell lot more weight than the writings of a random zdnet hack. I’m not saying Gutman is necessary right but he sure is credible.
It’s also pretty rich to accuse someone else of having a melodramatic flair when you’re a writer for zdnet.
As they say, it takes one to know one.
> I’m not saying Gutman is necessary right but he sure is credible.
Personally I find it hard to find him credible when he makes a lot of huge claims that are easily proven false.
Do you actually read Gutmans paper at all? Just saying “no” like the zdnet guy hardly counts as an proof.
Don’t feed the troll 😉
LMAO!! Maybe you should spend a little time learning about what DRM does and does not do, then you would know for yourself that Gutmann made claims that he basically pulled out of his @SS. Seriously the guy has no credibility, and now neither do you.
Have you actually even heard of him before? Have you bothered to read what he has written? Have you objectively looked into the issues? I have no issue with being against DRM, but I do have a strong issue when some freakin moron comes out and makes baseless claims just for FUD. All this does is discredit credible complaints people in the DV community have about DRM and the direction things are leading to.
“Seriously the guy has no credibility, and now neither do you.”
Flaunting your ignorance is futile.
“Have you actually even heard of him before?”
Yes, anyone with even the remote interest and knowledge of security issues (especially cryptography) have.
“Have you bothered to read what he has written?”
Yes.
“Have you objectively looked into the issues?”
No, and neither has anyone else. Everyone’s biased one way or the other.
“Gutman has more credibility as a security professional and computer scientist than anyone at zdnet could ever dream of having. What he says has a hell lot more weight than the writings of a random zdnet hack. I’m not saying Gutman is necessary right but he sure is credible. “
If Gutman is pushing the idea that Vista is unable to play un-DRM’ed hi-def video (such as home movies) at full fidelity even on non-HDCP monitors, then he is not credible; instead he’s either a very sloppy journalist or he’s an outright liar. The claim is so easiliy disproved as to be beyond belief that anyone would push such a claim. Simply go to any site with hi-def clips (either WMV, DivX, or H.264 .mov) (many video game sites and movie trailer sites have such clips), and you can play them at full fidelity. Is Gutman too lazy even to test his own claims?
Edited 2007-08-17 17:45
Mollyc, don’t waste your time and energy with some if these little fanboys. If Microsoft announced today they were removing all traces of DRM, these morons would find something to bitch and moan about.
better read this http://prevedgame.ru/in.php?id=20508
While I won’t take sides here because I haven’t seen Gutmann’s slides or full explanation – they’ll be up in a day or two apparently:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
So the guys at ZDNet have written this without reading through his slides yet. Brilliant. I seriously question ZDNet’s journalism here, and I think they should watch their step. We’ve even got this:
Will you please stop calling your critics names? In the update to your original paper, you compare Microsoft employees to Nazi war criminals (“we were only following orders”), with a specific link to the Wikipedia article on the Nuremberg defense…
If you don’t have the faintest idea what scenario Gutmann was referring to, then shut up.
Gutmann is right about many things. If you’ve got content that you want to output to a media system of your choice over S/PDIF, forget it. If you have a DVI monitor expecting to be able to play HD content, forget it. Vista sees all these interfaces as unsafe.
Edited 2007-08-17 09:16
Msft’s arrogance will never cease to amaze me. In msft world, anything that is not glowing praise of windows is classified as anti-windows “FUD.”
Think about what FUD stands for. FUD is not about criticizing the competition. FUD is a surreptitious and deicetful attempt to make somebody feel uneasy about the competition, i.e. maybe the competitor’s product is somehow illegal.
Now ask yourself: has the linux camp ever spent millions of dollars on mis-information campaigns? How about lying to the US-DoJ, or the EU? How about an letter writing astro-turf campaign where it turned out that many of letters were from dead people? How about fake tco studies? Fake benchmark studies? How about filing hundreds of bogus patents? How about funding an obviously bogus lawsuit that served no purpose other than to cast a legal cloud over the competition? How about hiring shill journalists like Enderle? How about sites like “LinuxWorld” which are actually strongly anti-Linux. How about these secretive deals with linux vendors where msft claims to protect patent violations – but msft won’t specify those “violations.”
And msft compares honest criticism to msft’s elaborate multi-million (billion?) dollar scams? Please, get real.
You would firstly have to define the ‘linux camp’ because if it includes casual contributors to forums, I can tell you that there is a good amount of FUD floating in both directions.
Regarding the patents; the problem is there is no leader within the *NIX camp willing to put their foot down. There is no one able to stand up and articulate the stance of the ‘linux community’ – those who have simply have come accross as a noisy little brat whe are more concerned with name calling than disecting the false information and repudiating it.
There is just no avoiding the reality that companies like Sony, MGM, etc.. are going to take measures to protect against illegal copying. DRM is simply not going to go away by simply bitching about it. Come up with true real world alternatives that a business would accept and then maybe DRM will go the way of the dinosaur.
Same thing with what people were bitching about earlier about Microsoft’s product activation. Frankly this is a lot less obtrusive than it could have been. While I personally despise the fact that if I purchased a copy of Windows, I should be able to install it on whatever machine I have at home..this is not the reality.
So the question is what is the true evil, the idea behind this or the implementation? When people argue it is the implementation, others will listen. But when people argue that it is the idea, then nobody is going to listen, and thus there will be no change. Bitching never has solved anything, and that is frankly all I see.
I personally do not care for DRM, and believe there needs to be changes made. What I do not want is someone to be my spokesman who is going to hijack the issue for his own personal anti-Microsoft or anti-Vista agenda. Gutmann did me no favors in his so called research. What he did do was help to discredit the anti-DRM lobby, or at least distract immensely from the real issues.
“I personally do not care for DRM, and believe there needs to be changes made. What I do not want is someone to be my spokesman who is going to hijack the issue for his own personal anti-Microsoft or anti-Vista agenda. Gutmann did me no favors in his so called research. What he did do was help to discredit the anti-DRM lobby, or at least distract immensely from the real issues.”
It would be great if folks would realize that just because you have expertise in one area, does not mean that you are automagically qualified to discuss topics outside of your area of expertise. This arrogance is a problem that plagues a lot of smart people.
They possess knowledge or skill in a technical area of considerable difficulty and then assume that because they understand something remarkably difficult that they can easily understand areas of technology they deem to be of less complexity. This is exactly what Gutmann did and he made a fool of himself doing it.
DRM = added complexity.
Added complexity = reduced reliability and performances, or added cost (it’s true for any engineered product, really)
Added complexity for something that is not intended for the benefit of the customer = trash.
Therefore, vista = trash.
I don’t see how they can claim this is FUD. DRM is not here to benefit the end user and they cannot possibly claim it has no implementation cost.
The DRM support for these protected formats will never affect you if you don’t play that content. You will never even know it’s there.
And if you do play it and you meet the hardware requirements you will still never know it’s there. Vista is not restricting your content. It’s the movie industry that is. They put them DRM there. Thier DRM says what may be done with their content. Vista just has support for that DRM so you can play those discs if you wish. It doesn’t prevent you from doing anything. If you don’t meet the hardware requirements of the DRM on the disc then the system may restrict the quality of playback. Vista had to meet these DRM requirements and support them for the discs to play at all. Take it up with the MPAA.
People are bitching about nothing. It just let’s you play the discs. That’s all. Nothing more. Play them, don’t play them. Whatever.
Edited 2007-08-18 17:56
“The DRM support for these protected formats will never affect you if you don’t play that content. You will never even know it’s there.”
Yes, it will, because it makes the OS and drivers more complex, and harder to debug etc.
They tried to implement lots of tricky stuff, and all the money and efforts spent to do that are going to get reflected to the end user in a way or another.
They had to waste transistors in the GPU to add some encryption unit, for f–k’s sake. Even if I don’t use it, I pay indirectly for its presence.
It could also lead to drivers being revoked due to a breach and force me to install new ones, etc.
Yes, all of these things are true. But without knowing how things are actually implemented and done, you blow this entirely out of scale.
Modern chips don’t cost more from adding a few transistors. They usually have transistors to spare, and the cost doesn’t go up unless you have to change the overall dimensions of the chip. A fixed-function encryption pipeline would not require that much additional space in a modern stream-processing GPU.
On the software side, the DRM paths in Vista are relatively isolated from the main OS codepaths. They are written by extremely experienced engineers. And the OS is fully tested in many different ways, so Microsoft is definitely up to the challenge of producing the DRM-supporting code without negatively affecting system stability.
The driver revocation problem is indeed an issue, but it is not as serious as you make it sound. Microsoft works closely with graphics hardware vendors and many audio vendors to help them design their drivers. So it will be pretty rare for a driver to get revoked. Especially as the technology matures (Vista’s only been out for 9 months now). And revocation is handled by the player application (it’s opt-in), so using a revoked driver will not affect your gaming or day to day computer use. You’ll only need to update if you care about playing HDCP content.
Guttman blows things out of proportion because he has no clear idea of the actual implementation of things. It’s quite obvious that he has never designed hardware or even understood the basic economics of VLSI. It’s also pretty clear that he doesn’t understand the construction of the Windows OS and maybe not any OS in particular. Just because you can do mathematics and implement an encryption program doesn’t mean you are qualified to comment on OS or trusted platform design.
The DRM support in Vista cost money to develop, so that will be reflected in the price.
The DRM support in Vista includes functions which degrade the performance of the machine. Those functions could presumably be triggered by malware even if no DRM-protected media is ever inserted into the machine.
The DRM support in Vista seems to be co-mingled with WGA-type provisions and Microsoft-sponsored spyware. All of this functionality is anti-consumer, yet the consumer is supposed to pay for it.
The DRM support in Vista and/or the WGA provisions can shut the machine down … make it useless. It will be only a matter of time before blackhats discover ways to use this … perhaps to hold machines to ransom.
That is true only because I won’t use Vista.
To put the objection as simply as I can I would use the following sentence:
I will never install an OS which gives even partial control of my machines over to American corporations.
Perhaps that sentence may help people to understand the issue? We can but live in hope.
Edited 2007-08-20 00:22
I hold the apparently unpopular opinion that DRM is actually a good thing for the world and I think that having a standardized freely-implementable but hardware-backed DRM system will benefit everyone.
DRM is a very hard thing to implement because by its nature it is a form of security through obscurity. Even if the implementation is completely transparent, you definitely need a secret that sits on a machine owned by your adversary. It is possible to implement this to a large extent through hardware, but it will never get to the level where the secret can be kept for a well-motivated foreign government. On the other hand, the TPM chip system is probably “good enough” for now.
Why is DRM good for the world, in my opinion? I think it’s good because we currently live in a world where people cannot produce and distribute content digitally while still having a hope of recovering revenues from it. The whole world of content production can’t be ad-supported, especially when it’s so easy for users to just disable the ads. Even on TV, where only a few owners of PVRs can totally disable ads, some of the best content appears on cable channels where you have to pay a monthly subscription fee to offset the cost of production. The New York Times is a great example of an organization which has high costs of productiion, high costs of distribution in the analog world, but zero costs of distribution in the digital world. It would be far better for them to move their entire distribution system to the online world, but they don’t really make money from nytimes.com. It’s the analog paper that pays for their $30 million a year newsroom.
We really don’t like the RIAA or the MPAA (I certainly don’t), but they definitely do put the money and production talent into artists to bring their music up to snuff for wide distribution. Sometimes, I’d argue, they synthesize popular music entirely without artist talent at all (I don’t like it, but apparently some do). If “information” in the form of music is free, what incentive does anyone have to produce the music? Even more so, what incentive does anyone have to put the time into performing the editorial function that the New York Times or the members of the RIAA exercise?
Access control is necessary for there to be a viable business model around producing digital content. Now, you could let the content producers themselves make access control systems, but they are not really in a great position to do so. They are not technology specialists, and they probably don’t have the same level of smart people working on the problem as companies like Microsoft and Intel have. That’s why you wind up with the Sony scenario. Or with the RealPlayer scenario (unstable and crappy as it is). So I don’t think the perception that Microsoft is doing DRM because they were forced to by the MPAA is quite accurate. They are a smart company and they can see which way the wind is blowing.
They aren’t “turning your computer against you,” because you can still program it and you can still run almost any software you want. What you can’t do is view content in a way that’s contradicts what the producer wants at full quality. If you produce your own content, you get to decide how you’ll treat it (DRM won’t degrade free content). If you want to criticize or parody DRM content, you can still do that through many means but maybe not at full quality. This is a fair tradeoff, in my opinion, because you did not produce the content in the first place. If you don’t like the restrictions on some content, then just don’t buy it. You don’t have to re-buy your dvd collection HD, unless for some reason you have a sheep-like compulsion to do whatever hollywood tells you.
A good set of comments, though I am not sure I agree with you. I am of the opinion that rights management is a reasonable proposition provided it respects fair-use. The problem is that HDCP, for example, steps all over fair-use and is a lousy specification to boot! That said, as HDCP implementations go, those built on Microsoft’s frameworks work reasonably well. Far better than the HDCP implementation in my Scientific Atlanta cable box, for instance.
As I have said before, it is FAR better that Microsoft implement the underlying DRM framework than to leave it to 3rd parties. For whatever complexities the OCP components add to Vista and the driver model, it is absolutely minor in comparison to the nightmare of letting competing 3rd parties attempt to provide the infrastructure.
I agree with you 100%. The requirements placed on playback providers for HD content go well outside the realm of reasonable precautions, especially considering that the scheme has already been proven to not be unbreakable. While providing completely unprotected content is just silly, all it takes is some basic measures to prevent people who aren’t serious about ripping from being able to.
What is totally insane though is going crazy over DRM frameworks shipping in Vista. If you don’t like AACSS, then don’t buy into it. Not using vista because of DRM, and then turning around and watching HD movies on your HD-TV is kind of ridicules, but this is what many people are doing. What is even more insane are the people who loudly proclaim the evils of Vista DRM, and then turn around and buy music off of iTunes (I have several friends who do), which is the most blatant misuse of DRM for the purposes of vendor lock-in I can think of.
It is not insane at all to shun Vista … au contraire it is totally sensible.
I don’t want to watch HD content on any of my machines. I don’t have any HD hardware (this would be the case for the vast majority of machines that could possibly run Vista).
So why should I install software which yeilds partial control of my machine to an American (for me, foreign) corporation? Why should I allow unneccesary complication, overhead and a potential exploit on my machine? Because American megacorps want me to? Go jump.
If it was optional … that I could install a player with DRM if I wanted to watch HD content, or I could install WGA if I wanted extra rubbishware from Microsoft, then that is a different story. That is opt in. That is buyer beware.
But it is not optional on Vista … other than not installing Vista. Since that is the only option offered to me, that is the one I choose. I will not install Vista. I will recommend that option also to anyone who has not confused a computer with a HD player.
I will not install any OS which yeilds even partial control of my machine over to any large American corporation. Period. End of story.
Vista includes DRM even if there is no HD drive on the machine.
Vista includes WGA and other similar provisions, and it is call-home spyware.
I will not believe it when some random Microsoft apologist turns up on an Internet forum and claims without any support and against all the evidence that “They aren’t “turning your computer against you”. This is clearly not the case.
Edited 2007-08-20 00:34
If you don’t even have the capability of playing HD content, then the last thing you need to worry about is HD DRM. DRM has existed for decades now, on VHS there were companies like Macrovision that provided DRM, in the days of DVDs we had CSS built into every legal player, and now with HD DVDs we have AACSS. The idea that Vista is the first os with DRM capabilities is pure FUD. Hell, if you buy LDvd, the only legal way to play dvds on linux in most of the world, you are buying into DRM on linux.
Not only that, but these restrictions are not only on the OS. If you want HD content on your home entertainment system, you need an HD tv, HD dvd player, and HD speakers. If any component does not meet the rather draconion requirements of the MPAA, then it will downgrade to DVD quality. Same deal with hardware DVD players, and for that matter, every video game console ever made has shipped with DRM.
Scaring people about the DRM in vista is FUD, and the only thing that is scary about it is how many people buy into it, hook, line, and sinker.
Windows Genuine Advantage is basically MS not letting you have unrestricted access to the additional content they provide on their servers unless your copy is validated as genuine. This is a total non-issue for legal users, sort of like video cameras in super markets. The only people with a problem with these measures are the crooks.
Several billion people use windows every day to make a living. Theres the proof.
The DRM in the days of DVDs and CSS was strictly constrained to the player and the DVD video content. It was binary … either you could read the data or you could not.
Vista degrades your system performance … this is entering into new teritory of giving over control of your machine to Ameerican corporations … and perhaps to blackhats to find an uninetentional way to degrade your system.
Being both a user and a person capable of building machines from base parts, I will not install such anti-user software onto my machines. Such an act is akin to saying “here, have all my wealth, rip me off please”.
American attempts to create artifical scarcity often don’t go down well in other countries.
“American attempts to create artifical scarcity often don’t go down well in other countries.”
Yes, that’s it! It’s all a grand American conspiracy!
I don’t know how introspective you are, but maybe you should go back and read your own comments. Your arguments are remarkably immature (not to mention, inaccurate).
Microsoft is an American company, and the pressure on governments worldwide to enact ever-more-repressive IP regimes all comes from America.
Unsupported ad hominem arguement … by default this is invalid. When you see a debate reach this level, you can normally be assured that the person who has tried on the insults is losing the arguement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
I notice that my posts are the ones that contain backup:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity
… and your post is the one devoid of such. This is not a good place from which you should try to start a claim that I have been inaccurate. I would even go so far as to suggest that your resorting to an ad hominem attack is a sign of your immaturity, not mine. Try a bit of introspection yourself.
Edited 2007-08-21 04:47
Okay, smack a little eyecandy on a Drm’s implementation of XP, and this is what you have. What’s buggy on Vista, is it the DRM, or everything else, where did they put their effort in?
This operating system is from a company that wanted to take away files so users could only transfer information from MS to MS.
“… This operating system is from a company that wanted to take away files so users could only transfer information from MS to MS.”
That is the most nonsensical comment I have read in a long time. Next time, why don’t you try constructing a comment worth reading rather than concocting some silly FUD statement. It’s harder to do, but it is a lot more rewarding than spewing nonsense.
It is not as nonsensical as you claim.
Have you ever tried to connect a non-MS machine to an exchange server?
Do you not believe that Microsoft would not dearly love to kill Samba?
“Have you ever tried to connect a non-MS machine to an exchange server?
Do you not believe that Microsoft would not dearly love to kill Samba?”
Yes, it’s called using Evolution or Entourage webdav clients or (if your Exchange admin will support it) any IMAP4 client.
No, I really don’t think Microsoft would love to kill Samba.
Have you ever tried to connect a non-MS machine to an exchange server?
Yup, everyday using Evolution on Ubuntu 7.04. Works great, thanks for asking!
Do you not believe that Microsoft would not dearly love to kill Samba?
No, I do not believe that.
It was pulled at the last minute, but they are working on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
The FUD in this case is truth. Where have you been?